News headlines in September 2010

The younger ones in the group tried to imitate the older boys, in their teens and early 20s, who wear the latest fashion promoted by Hindi and South Indian movie stars — faded denim jeans, tight T-shirts, and oversized belts hanging nonchalantly around their slim waists. Alongside them, the handful of women wore brightly coloured ‘shalwar kamiz’ (traditional South Asian dress) that fluttered in the wind.

With the backing of large crowds of supporters in the streets and of statements from presidents throughout Latin America, the Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa is attempting to quell a riot by hundreds of police protesting a cut in their benefits which has thrown the country into chaos.

The steady increase in U.S. cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into the frontier areas of Pakistan — whether by drone missiles or attack helicopters — is causing a serious backlash from both the region's residents and Islamabad's government and military leadership.

Regina Namukasa has been twice dispossessed — first when her husband died and his clan left her out when dividing up his estate, and again when she was denied a share in her father's land. But this time she's fighting back.

Centre-left candidate Susana Villarán has unexpectedly surged ahead of her centre-right rival Lourdes Flores in the polls to become the front-runner in the race for Sunday's elections for mayor in the Peruvian capital.

Every year since 1976 the United States has unilaterally passed judgement, through the State Department, on the human rights situation in some 190 countries. The 5,000-page reports sent to Congress each March regularly rouses angry responses from some of the nations assessed.